The Bauhaus and Public Relations

Transkript

1 The Bauhaus and Public Relations This innovative study considers one of the most important art and design movements of the twentieth century, the Bauhaus, in conjunction with current research in public relations and organizational communication, elaborating on the mechanisms of internal and external communication available to influence the stakeholders of an institution. In a movement where a substantial share of productivity ran in measures to highlight the public value of the institution funded by the taxpayer, its directors, and other persons in charge developed comprehensive strategies to communicate their messages to a variety of target groups such as politicians and economic leaders, intellectuals and other artists, current and prospective students, and the general public. To achieve this goal, the Bauhaus anticipated many instruments of modern public relations and corporate communications, including press releases, staging of events, media publications, community building, lobbying, and the creation of nationwide public presence. Rössler argues that as an organization, the Bauhaus cultivated corporate behavior and, most prominently, a corporate design which unfolded revolutionary power. The basic achievements of New Typography (a label coined at the Bauhaus) determine visual communication to this day, while the Bauhaus moved from an institutional organization to a community. Beginning with an overview of the Bauhaus s corporate identity and a close examination of the respective directors roles for internal and external communication, this book visits exhibitions, events, and the media attention they evoked in newspapers and contemporary periodicals, along with media products designed at the Bauhaus such as magazines, books, and bank notes. Patrick Rössler is Chair of Communication Studies and currently serving as Vice President at the University of Erfurt, Germany. His research interests include media effects, visual communication, and media history. Previous publications include The Bauhaus at the Newsstand (2009) and the Exhibition catalogue VIEWing our LIFE and TIMES (2006).

2 Routledge Research in Public Relations 1 Classical Rhetoric and Modern Public Relations An Isocratean Model Charles Marsh 2 Public Relations, Activism, and Social Change Speaking Up Kristin Demetrious 3 Ethical Practice of Social Media in Public Relations Edited by Marcia W. DiStaso and Denise Sevick Bortree 4 The Bauhaus and Public Relations Communication in a Permanent State of Crisis Patrick Rössler

3 The Bauhaus and Public Relations Communication in a Permanent State of Crisis Patrick Rössler NEW YORK LONDON

4 First published 2014 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 2014 Taylor & Francis The right of Patrick Rössler to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rössler, Patrick. The Bauhaus and public relations : communication in a permanent state of crisis / by Patrick Rössler. pages cm. (Routledge research in public relations ; 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Bauhaus Public relations. 2. Bauhaus Public opinion. I. Title. N332.G33W ' dc ISBN13: (hbk) ISBN13: (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by IBT Global.

5 Contents List of Tables and Figures Introduction 1 1 Corporate Identity: The Bauhaus in Dialogue with the Public 8 PART I Meeting the Public 2 The Networks: How the Directors Shaped Perceptions 37 Including: Politics and fun: Communicating the Meyer Bauhaus (by Dara Kiese) 60 Community building without Public Relations: the Mies era (by Dara Kiese) 66 3 The Exhibitions: Promoting the Bauhaus Idea 70 Including: Hannes Meyer s Wanderschau (by Dara Kiese) 75 4 The Events: Staging the Bauhaus for the Public 85 vii PART II Designing Printed Matter 5 The Propaganda: Graphic Design and the Printing/Advertising Workshops The Money: New Typography in Everybody s Pockets (by Nele Heise) 120

6 vi Contents 7 The Prints: Books and Magazines in the New Typography 137 PART III The Voices of the Others 8 The Media: Monitoring Press Coverage The Commentaries: Instrumentalizing the Press Response The Periodicals: Successful Agenda Setting 198 Conclusion 217 Notes 223 Bibliography 263 Index 283

7 Tables and Figures TABLES 4.1 Advertising and PR Activities for the Bauhaus Events of Emergency Money of the Thuringian State, Design Attributed to Herbert Bayer Most Frequent Primary and Secondary Themes Overall (n = 1,526) Actors in Press Coverage (n = 1,341) Selected Actors in the Different Phases of Press Coverage (n = 1,076) Average Assessment of the Bauhaus by Individual Authors Mean Values of Media Types by Phase; Weighted by Article Length (n = 1,187) Assessment of the Bauhaus in Thuringian Newspapers Weighted by Article Length (n = 319) Average Mean Values for the Bauhaus Controversy Articles Weighted by Article Length (n = 536) Distribution of Media Types in Both Phases, Bauhaus Articles (n = 219) Article Tendency by Phase (n = 232) 183 FIGURES 1.1 The Bauhaus in public communication an overview Lyonel Feininger: The Cathedral Bauhaus Weimar signets Bauhaus printed matter in the New Typography, using lowercase letters only. 20

8 viii Tables and Figures 1.5 Bauhaus building, Dessau; view from the southwest Community relations, supported by the Circle of Friends: invitation to a Gropius lecture and presentation of Bauhaus products Special issue: The Bauhaus. Offset-, Buch- und Werbekunst 3 (1926), Overview of the Bauhaus stakeholders Handwritten distribution list for press releases Shareholders of the Bauhaus GmbH, December Hans Poelzig: call for membership mentioning members of the board of trustees Cover of the first Bauhaus Dessau prospectus Cover of the second Bauhaus Dessau prospectus Article on the occasion of the Bauhaus closing in Dessau Belly band advertising the Bauhauswoche Cover of the Wanderschau catalogue, Basel exhibition Newspaper advertising announcing the Bauhaus Exhibition Exhibition leaflet announcing the Bauhaus exhibition and Bauhaus week in Leaflet announcing the inauguration of the new Bauhaus building Purified New Typography in Dessau: Cover of a museum guide Loose insert for a Bauhaus product catalogue, advertising a folding theater seat Advertising folder for Fagus punching tools Secret marks placed on the Weimar emergency banknotes Prospectus for the first Bauhaus book Prospectus for the Bauhaus book series Cover of the bauhaus magazine, issue #1, Cover of the magazine Der Kunstnarr, first and only issue, List of newspapers covered by the Max Goldschmidt press clippings service (circa 1929) Assessment of the Bauhaus in the phases of press coverage (n = 1,211, weighted by length) Gropius s methods: original with editing marks (left) and as subsequently printed in the press commentaries (right) Typewritten press mailing list for the Press Commentaries for the Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar. 197

9 Tables and Figures ix 10.1 Second cover of the Bauhaus issue, Junge Menschen #8, Cover of the magazine Blätter für Alle #2, Girls wish to learn something, magazine report from Die Woche #1, Special issue on the Bauhaus Dessau, ReD #5, Spread from Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung #1,

10

11 Introduction The Bauhaus exists in a permanent state of crisis it fights since it was established. It ranks on top of the best-hated institutions of the new German Reich. It has become a first-class object in electoral battles. 1 Grete Dexel, 1928 The Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar (State Bauhaus in Weimar) was founded in 1919 as an art college, integrating an existing fine arts academy and an arts and crafts school. However, its primary purpose was initially the nonacademic training of journeymen in practical manual skills, while its primary mission was to establish teaching activities tailored effectively to that purpose. 2 Self-evident, certainly, but it cannot hurt to recall these institutional roots from time to time. And after advancing to an avant-garde arts and crafts school, the Bauhaus was displaced twice by conservative governments and thus had to move to Dessau (1925) and Berlin (1932) before it was closed down in 1933 as a response to the repressions of the Nazi regime and many of its protagonists were forced to live in exile or emigration. Insiders such as Grete Dexel and her husband 3 have described the situation as a permanent state of crisis, where a substantial share of productivity ran in measures to highlight the public value of the institution funded by the taxpayer. In a singular occurrence in due time, the directors (such as Walter Gropius) and other persons in charge (artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, and László Moholy-Nagy) developed comprehensive strategies to communicate their messages to a variety of target groups: Politicians and economic leaders, intellectuals, other artists, current and prospective students, and the general public. To achieve this goal, the Bauhaus anticipated many instruments of modern public relations and corporate communications, including press releases, staging of events, media publications (company and customer magazines, books and brochures), community building (the Circle of Friends), lobbying, and the creation of nationwide public presence (with its dance company, jazz band, or public lectures). As an organization, the Bauhaus cultivated corporate behavior and, most prominently, a corporate design that unfolded revolutionary power: The label New Typography was coined at the Bauhaus, its principles were advanced and refined in its graphic design and advertising classes, and the Neues Sehen (New Vision) was spread by Bauhaus publications and broadsheets. The basic achievements of this innovative typography (asymmetric layout in spreads, sansserif letters, full-page photography, typophotos and photomontage,

12 2 The Bauhaus and Public Relations etc.) determine visual communication to this day, while the Bauhaus had moved from an institutional organization to a virtual community based on communication. It was because of the unintended but ultimate success of Bauhaus communication that the new style for disseminating mediated messages is still known as Bauhaus typography all over the world. However, from a contemporary perspective, this view of the Bauhaus as an innovator also in the field of public relations seems rather uncommon for Bauhaus scholarship. Instead, the Bauhaus often appears above all as the hotbed of a radically modern approach to style; as a result, the (predominantly art-historical) literature focuses on the works of individual protagonists and the connections between their work in different contexts. Although more recent studies, especially in the English-speaking world, have posed increasingly original questions about the Bauhaus, 4 they sometimes lose sight of its actual function, and for good reasons emphasize other aspects rather than discussing the way in which the school and its protagonists acted in public. Even Elaine S. Hochman s meritorious study on the Bauhaus s history situated in a complex composite of forces and interactions between the Bauhaus and its environment 5 places little emphasis on communication processes and the media involved. Research often interprets, for instance, newspaper coverage as a valuable source, but without a further reflection of how the articles originated and what impact they had. By contrast, this book looks at the Bauhaus as an organization and investigates the communication relationships within which the institution and its protagonists were embedded. These are understood as including the measures initiated by the Bauhaus in order to engage in dialogue with the public public relations as well as the messages aimed at the Bauhaus from outside. Of equal interest are the statements published in the media and those communicated on a personal level, drawing on an integrated understanding of corporate communications as part of a corporate identity that also includes corporate design and corporate behavior. 6 The central instrument of these corporate communications is public relations, followed by advertising and intraorganizational communication. This analysis is based on a current understanding of corporate communications, which as we will see seems quite capable of providing a meaningful framework for these phenomena in the 1920s. A basic concept within this framework will be the idea of innovation and innovativeness, as it applies to both the public relations and the art and design approach of the Bauhaus and thus may serve as a bridge between art history and communication scholarship. One fundamental assumption of this study is that the Bauhaus can be understood as an organization to which the standards of corporate communications can clearly be applied. Another is that, from the time of its founding, the Weimar Bauhaus operated under constant external pressure 7 ; thus, from today s perspective, most of its communication measures fall into the category of crisis public relations (in the sense of an appeal to the

13 Introduction 3 public). 8 The central thesis is that the Bauhaus and especially Walter Gropius as its most prominent representative was highly successful in reaching and persuading different stakeholders and audiences with its messages. It is hard to overestimate the role this must have played in enabling the Bauhaus to maintain its existence for so long in Weimar (and later in Dessau) in the face of a hostile environment. For this study the pertinent source material in the Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar (Main Thuringian State Archive Weimar) and the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin (Bauhaus Archive Berlin) has been reexamined, 9 and the research literature, especially on the typography and publications of the Bauhaus, has been explored from a different perspective. 10 A preeminent role is played by Ute Brüning s writings for the catalogue Das A und O des Bauhauses, which she edited, and by the wealth of original documents that it includes. 11 An additional essential resource is provided by Claudia Sohn s master s thesis on the public relations work of the Bauhaus 12, which like Kerstin Eckstein s overview of the self-presentation of the Bauhaus in the 1920s 13 already lists and categorizes a multitude of communication measures. These and other activities are interpreted below in the light of (communications) scholars theories of public action by organizations and institutions. Starting from a heuristic informed by the concept of corporate identity, Chapter 1 provides an overview of different approaches to the analysis of how the Bauhaus was included within communicative relationships. It enumerates the major instruments used by the Bauhaus for internal and external communication against the background of public relations history. Its primary aim is to illustrate the many facets of Bauhaus communications; necessarily, owing to limitations of space, this chapter must remain cursory with regard to particular phenomena. These phenomena are detailed in the remaining nine chapters, which are organized in three parts of three chapters each: The first section, entitled Meeting the Public, addresses the interactions of Bauhaus members by means of direct, unmediated communication and events, allowing for faceto-face encounters. Chapter 2 focuses on the three Bauhaus directors Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and their use of communication networks. By virtue of the Bauhaus s constitution, it was the respective director s privilege to take responsibility for its external representation. Thus it is crucial to our understanding of Bauhaus communication to discuss the three directors individual perspectives on this issue, to outline their program for addressing stakeholders, and to delineate the personal networks that they exploited for communication purposes. The precise juxtaposition of public relations approaches pursued by Meyer and Mies was contributed by Dara Kiese (MoMA New York). In Chapter 3, we take a closer look at a communicative tool particularly important for an art school: the exhibition of paintings, sculpture, graphic design, or the arts and crafts works produced by Bauhaus masters

14 4 The Bauhaus and Public Relations and students. These exhibitions represented a natural focal point for public awareness, as they were designed to raise interest among critics, patrons, art lovers, prospective students, local and regional authorities, and the media targeting all of these groups. Art and Technology A New Unity was the title of a programmatic lecture that formed a high point of the Weimar Bauhaus Exhibition of In 1929, Hannes Meyer Gropius s successor as Bauhaus director presented a contrasting model under the title bauhaus and society, a model whose essentials were to be propagated through a traveling exhibition. Chapter 3 contrasts both shows from the perspective of media events research and adds evidence on other relevant exhibitions organized by Bauhaus artists until the 1930s. In a broader sense, Chapter 4 explicates two special events: the Bauhaus week in 1923 and the opening of the Bauhaus building in They represented a focal point for the variety of the permanent cultural and academic activities that were staged at the Bauhaus and exerted an influence on its public image. For instance, the regular Bauhaus lectures, which featured intellectuals from all disciplines; the Bauhaus drama company, a highly imaginative theater workshop whose performances at home and on tour fascinated the critics; the Bauhaus band, which promoted modern jazz and advanced to a popular entertainment program; and the famous Bauhaus festival nights, with their visionary costumes and lavish celebrations. All together, the chapter introduces important instruments that served to foster ties with the local public and points at the prominent role of interpersonal communication for maintaining stakeholder relations. Part II is concerned with the printed media distributed on behalf of the Bauhaus, all bearing the distinctive trademark of its corporate identity and designed in a visual language following the principles of the New Typography. This unique contribution of the Bauhaus to avant-garde culture is explained in Chapter 5, which focuses on the role of the Bauhaus s printing workshop and its pioneers of modern typography Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, and Joost Schmidt in communicating a coherent image of the institution. It propagated sans serif typefaces, layouts of spreads rather than single pages, asymmetric arrangements of elements, the use of white space, lowercase lettering, and other innovations acknowledged today as the Bauhaus style. This chapter discusses the emergence of the New Typography, introduces the major designers and their main work in the field, and elaborates on the relevance of the Bauhaus style for community building, public perception, and Bauhaus communication in general. Chapter 6 is devoted to the first commission received by the Bauhaus: the design of banknotes for the State of Thuringia as an emergency currency during the period of hyperinflation in late This project, carried out by Herbert Bayer, was an intriguing example of the New Typography. The bills, printed in high numbers, circulated among individuals at all levels of society and thus contributed heavily to the public recognition of the Bauhaus style. The banknote project represented a powerful but largely

15 Introduction 5 unknown instrument of Bauhaus communication and is analyzed here by Nele Heise for the first time in detail. Finally, Chapter 7 elaborates on the two major publications produced by the Bauhaus the series of Bauhaus books and the quarterly Bauhaus magazine which can be understood as a newsletter for the Bauhaus idea. The most prominent application of the Bauhaus style in print emerged from the fourteen-part book series edited by Moholy-Nagy. The set began with four volumes in 1924 and is still an outstanding example of modern typography. The chapter explicates the concept of the book series, documents the scheduled but never published manuscripts, and uncovers the function of the project as a whole in terms of propagating Bauhaus ideas. The same is true for the illustrated quarterly issued by the Bauhaus during its Dessau period, which served as the main outlet for the Bauhaus philosophy. With contributions by all masters and covering all fields of modern culture art, architecture, theater, movies, photography, and urban life the Bauhaus magazine represented one of the first and most influential periodicals in the intellectual life of Weimar Germany. Moreover, the chapter highlights the magazine s function as a newsletter distributed to influentials and opinion leaders around the globe, thus making it a major public relations instrument of the late Bauhaus. This comprehensive chapter explicates why today both publications are perceived as primary sources for avant-garde graphic design while also representing a unique source for the key messages the Bauhaus intended to communicate to the worlds of art and culture. Part III looks at the phenomenon from an opposite perspective and analyzes the messages about the Bauhaus circulating in contemporary media. Situated in a permanent state of crisis, the Bauhaus was an object of public dispute in media coverage, both nationally and internationally. This debate was fueled by press releases from the Bauhaus directors, who provided statements and materials designed to evoke a favorable public opinion. This major topic of the volume is arranged in two sections: Chapter 8 presents the results of a content analysis of more than 2,000 press clippings on the Bauhaus collected between 1919 and Based on a detailed coding scheme, these data reveal how the Bauhaus was depicted in newspapers around the world. This evidence is complemented by Chapter 9, incorporating a qualitative analysis of the booklet Pressestimmen für das Staatliche Bauhaus Weimar (Press Commentary on the Bauhaus) issued by Gropius in 1924, which shows how the Bauhaus utilized media resonance as a weapon in the political controversy. A considerable success of external communications is represented by the large number of special issues that independent periodicals devoted to the Bauhaus. Gropius and his colleagues were highly effective in distributing their messages via leading media sources. Chapter 10 collects the most prominent incidents where the agenda-setting initiatives of Bauhaus communication resulted in illustrated articles running over several pages and sometimes even a whole issue. At the same time, the chapter offers insight

16 6 The Bauhaus and Public Relations into the external perspectives on the Bauhaus and in this way summarizes the main aspects of the book as a whole. The volume concludes with some final remarks expanding the argument to the period after the Bauhaus closed and survived essentially as a network community, also indicating the relevance of the results for future research in both art history and strategic communication. This book is essentially the outcome of a research program conducted at the University of Erfurt between 2008 and 2011 that included several public exhibitions on the occasion of the Bauhaus Year Among these exhibitions was a show called The Bauhaus at the Newsstand, displaying designs of popular periodicals that followed the principles of Bauhaus typography, particularly the fashion magazine die neue linie. The scope of the Bauhaus communication issue was substantially broadened by an academic symposium where Bauhaus scholars from different disciplines discussed the topic s dimensions. However, the backbone of this program was a two-year-long research workshop involving undergraduate and graduate students who took part in all investigations, searching for materials in archives and libraries, coding thousands of articles, organizing the symposium, and finally contributing to an edited volume in the German language. I wish to thank Marc Etzold, Nele Heise, Josefine Hintze, Claudia Junge, and Corinna Lauerer for their dedication and commitment and for their tremendous support of an idea that was vague in the beginning and turned out to be an inspiring new approach for Bauhaus research. I am very much obliged to them for the permission to use some of their German texts as groundwork for this manuscript. Isabel Cole did a wonderful job of translating some chapters from the German and copyediting the English manuscript. I am also thankful to all contributors of the symposium and the German anthology Peter Bernhard (Erlangen-Nürnberg), Ute Brüning (Berlin), Petra Eisele (Mainz), Helmuth Erfurth (Dessau), Bernd Freese (Frankfurt), Juliana Raupp (Berlin), Wolfgang Thöner (Dessau), and Christoph Wagner (Regensburg) have added substantially to our understanding of Bauhaus communication; without their thoughts and ideas this volume would not have been possible. I appreciate their thorough consideration and sincerely hope that my reflection does not violate their notions of the subject matter. This is especially true for Dara Kiese (MoMA New York), who introduced convincing thoughts on public relations in the era of the late Bauhaus thoughts that have found their way into relevant chapters. Of course, support from the Bauhaus institutions in Germany was indispensable to the pursuit of our research program. I am deeply indebted to Annemarie Jaeggi (Bauhaus Archiv Berlin), who gave us all opportunities to review the wealth of materials, particularly from the estate of Walter Gropius; to Philipp Oswalt (Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau); and especially to Ulrike Bestgen (Klassik Stiftung Weimar), who always believed in this

17 Introduction 7 remote topic and honored it with its consideration for the Bauhaus Year in Finally, I express my special appreciation to my colleague, Prof. Dr. Magdalena Droste (Cottbus/Berlin), whose critical endorsement always encouraged me when I was in doubt of the right path. Her amazing knowledge about the Bauhaus and the Bauhäusler helped me more than once, and her reasoning explored areas of Bauhaus communication I had not even been aware of before. I dedicate this volume to my wife Kerstin, as a small sign of gratitude for her patience and her comprehension for the many hours I spent with this manuscript.

18 1 Corporate Identity The Bauhaus in Dialogue with the Public The history of the Bauhaus has often been told and is easily accessible elsewhere. 1 Reviews emphasize the role of the art school, oscillating between reform and avant-garde; it was the first art school to be reformed after the First World War, having resumed teaching in the new Republic in The leading figure was architect Walter Gropius, who was appointed director on April 12 and soon converted the traditional institution into a unique collaboration of artists and craftsmen under one roof. He first appointed Johannes Itten, Lyonel Feininger, and Gerhard Marcks, to be followed later by Goerg Muche and, representing the most prominent Bauhaus staff, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, and László Moholy-Nagy. These artists gave rise to the public perception of the Bauhaus as a cradle of the avant-garde in the twentieth century; however, it was not the individual brilliance of the Bauhaus masters but their mutual contribution to an ultimate goal that made the school singular in its time. Despite a hostile local public at all three of the Bauhaus locations Weimar, Thuringia ( ); Dessau, Saxony- Anhalt ( ); and Berlin ( ) it proved successful, in different ways, in uniting art and technology: first in an expressionist period and then in constructivist and functionalist movements. 2 Swiss urbanist Hannes Meyer joined the Bauhaus faculty to head the new Architecture Department in 1927; he replaced Gropius as the school s director just a year later, in April His architectural projects and theoretical writings preceding his appointment established his reputation as an innovative architect who tried to address new social challenges with an architecture that stressed function and collectivism over aesthetic concerns and individualism. His accomplishments as director including a reorganization of the curriculum, increasing revenues through mass-production of Bauhaus designs, and drawing large numbers of new students to the school have been overshadowed by controversies about his politics and his dismissal by the municipal authorities in August Dividing the Bauhaus era into periods based on the terms of its directors, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe also had little more than two years until the Bauhaus finally closed, in 1933, when the Nazi Party came into power. His leadership was

19 Corporate Identity 9 characterized by an unfortunate start (students on strike owing to Meyer s dismissal) and an even less fortunate end as a private school in a Berlin backyard, poorly financed and under observation by the Gestapo. 4 Although there are good reasons to appreciate the Bauhaus solely for its merits in art and design, it should not be overlooked that all the individual and collective oeuvres were possible only because the Bauhaus operated more or less productively as an institution of higher education. On this assumption we may argue with the Communicative Constitution of Organization (CCO) movement 5 that organizations can be conceived as being communicatively constituted or to quote James R. Taylor: I have never been able to figure out how there could be an organization in the absence of communication, existing before communication, and on material plane distinct from it. It seems self-evident to me that organization is a product of communication, and totally dependent on symbolic sense-making through interaction for its mere existence. 6 With regard to the Bauhaus, thus, we may ask what role communication played in the developments mentioned here, particularly beyond the merely aesthetic considerations usually applied in evaluating the Bauhaus s merits. If this perspective is instrumental in assessing the Bauhaus as an organization and we believe this to be the case the evidence accumulated in this book should help future research to explain the Bauhaus s mode of operation and thus provide a distinct framework for our understanding of the ups and downs characterizing this institution, perhaps the major cradle of modernism in the twentieth century. After the Bauhaus closed in 1933, its founding spirit as well as its principles of education and design survived, even without the spiritus loci of the Bauhaus building and a regular school. The Bauhaus moved from an institution to a community as we understand it today: Most of its members, harassed and menaced by Nazi rule, were displaced and scattered all over the globe, but for decades they managed to maintain personal networks of support and inspiration. Deprived of its physical hub and its norms, both requisites of an institution, 7 what remained of the Bauhaus were its leading principles and values as adapted by the individuals who had left it behind. Thus the group of Bauhäusler became a Bauhaus community a group of individuals engaged in mutual relationship to pursue shared interests and their interactions were, of course, dominated by communication over time and space. For the survival of the Bauhaus community, the maintenance of relationships by communication media was crucial, bridging the gaps between local networks of varying consistence and endurance. 8 For example, regarding the communications of former Bauhaus master Gerhard Marcks, spanning the different periods of the Bauhaus movement, previous analysis has distinguished networks including intellectual groups, chains of masters and students, and ties of rivalry. 9

20 10 The Bauhaus and Public Relations If we accept the vital role of communication for institution building on the one hand and, on the other, the prevalence of Bauhaus networks of communication relating its members over time under the umbrella of a shared mission, it appears promising to analyze the communication within, around, and outside the Bauhaus in order to better understand its performance. Whether the Bauhaus can be considered to have been a success in its time or from a today s point of view and according to which criteria is still a controversial issue. In an early data-based account, Folke Dietzsch, who began his work under the scientific structures of the German Democratic Republic, aimed at collecting the names and biographical details of all Bauhaus students identifiable from the official sources in Weimar and Dessau. 10 He offers a wealth of data that might be suited for an assessment; for instance, he reports that looking at the graduations, only about 15 to 20 percent of all Bauhaus students actually obtained a diploma or a certificate of apprenticeship. 11 This low rate of completed studies can be seen as a failure, given the school s general objective of educating young people. However, in their later lives, a considerable number of Bauhaus students were able to establish their own studios, agencies, or architect s offices; in retrospect, most of the Bauhäuslers stated that their studies at the Bauhaus whether completed with a grade or not were formative for their future careers and essential to their definitions of success in their personal lives. 12 According to other criteria (e.g., share of international and female students respectively, relationships between masters and students, number of guest lectures, etc.), the Bauhaus was in the vanguard, conceding that its aesthetic concept remains in dispute even today. With regard to its effects on global issues of art, design, and urban development, former Bauhaus students have left their traces in a many nations. 13 In retrospect, even critical accounts of the Bauhaus acknowledge the tremendous impact it had throughout the years of its chequered reception in various contexts. 14 The two main indicators of its inefficacy, however, cannot be argued away: The Bauhaus was twice chased away from its locations in two different German states and was led by two different directors. And for a comprehensive view, we cannot disregard the fact that governmental structures in these environments were based on democratic elections. So despite our ongoing sympathy for the Bauhaus as representing a refuge of cultural opposition against conservative and fascist forces in Weimar Germany, public opinion at that time was mixed to say the least. This leads us back to the basic notion of this book mentioned above to analyze the contribution of communication processes in their broadest sense to the Bauhaus s success as well as its failure. From today s knowledge, we argue that the Bauhaus can be understood as an organization to which, for analytic purposes, today s standards of corporate communications can be applied, being well aware of the misleading description of the Bauhaus as a corporation. While a more correct designation would instead label the

21 Corporate Identity 11 Figure 1.1 The Bauhaus in public communication an overview (author s diagram). Bauhaus as an institution or just an organization, we decided to preserve the technical term of corporate communication (and, consequently, corporate identity, design, and behavior) because they are well established in previous research, and applying these concepts exactly accounts for one major novelty in Bauhaus research. Within this framework (see Figure 1.1) the activities of what we would call public relations the communication relationships with internal and external audiences deserve our special attention because they put aspects of corporate design and corporate behavior into a perspective that may constitute a link between the approaches in art history and social science.

22 12 The Bauhaus and Public Relations PUBLIC RELATIONS IN GERMANY OF THE 1920S To assess the significance of the Bauhaus s public relations more adequately, it seems useful to look at the field s state of development in Weimar Germany in general, which allows for a judgment not only from a today s perspective but also in relation to the contemporary background. After World War I, Germany experienced a growing awareness of public relations, 15 although one cannot speak of a professional field at that point. 16 The earlytwentieth-century upswing in the evolution of public relations, in part a response to changes in modern journalism, can be traced back to two main factors: First, many observers (and affected parties) believed that the open partisanship of many media, especially the so-called opinion press, was leading to distorted coverage or a complete lack thereof; second, it became clear that in emergent modern civil societies, large target groups and audience sectors could be reached only via media such as the popular press (or later the radio). 17 Edward L. Bernays s primer titled The Art of Public Relations, published in 1928, first established public relations then referred to as propaganda as a broad-based instrument of strategic communication. 18 He devotes two separate chapters to the spheres of education and art, at whose intersection the Bauhaus operated. He clearly identifies dependency on the state and/or sponsors as a determining factor, while describing art as minority rule by means of pressure on public opinion. For this reason, he argues, public relations plays an especially important role in this field: In applied and commercial art, propaganda makes greater opportunities for the artist than ever before. 19 He mentions dramatically staged events such as exhibitions as a central instrument for maintaining a connection with public life. With respect to the Bauhaus, it is worth emphasizing Bernays s view that mass production is especially dependent on innovations from the artistic sphere propaganda is accustoming the public to change and progress. 20 This is not the place for a general historical account of public relations; research has identified several concepts of how to classify the theoretical approaches and periods that, with regard to our subject, characterize the Weimar years by a process of consolidation and growth within the profession. 21 Arguably the first academic contribution to the field was published in 1922 by Johann Plenge. In his volume German Propaganda as a Practical Lesson for Society, 22 he outlines an approach locating strategies of persuasion within the context of broader political and economic reasoning. Although it might appear intriguing that Plenge used the term propaganda, we have to keep in mind that, in his time, this was the umbrella term for the whole bundle of communication measures referred to today as Werbung (publicity, promotion), Reklame (advertising, commercials) or Öffentlichkeitsarbeit (public relations). 23 In 1914, for instance, public relations efforts were adressed as editorial advertising (redaktionelle Reklame), defined

23 Corporate Identity 13 as promotional statements persons wish to place in the editorial parts of a newspaper. 24 In his scientific essay, Plenge observes the rising influence of propaganda in all fields of public life, particularly in the large industrial and trade enterprises of industrialization and consumerism. A set of case studies 25 reveals that already in the nineteenth century, both governmental institutions and private companies in Germany had intensified their communication activities in order to influence the perceptions of the public and various groups of stakeholders. This leads to the conclusion that there had been public relations in Germany even before the term existed, following modern approaches at the time and anticipating some of the developments that were later attributed exclusively to the situation in the United States. Knowledge of public relations had, however, not been accumulated systematically at that time (for instance, in handbooks or course materials); therefore its methods had to be worked out over and over again, starting from scratch. 26 This description exactly fits the situation at the Bauhaus, where (as will be shown in the following chapters) public relations was not backed by any professional skills, a particular approach, or institutional background that would have been able to unite the wealth of creative and innovative measures in a comprehensive public relations strategy. In her systematic review of early press offices at the turn of the twentieth century, Denise Bieler touches on various areas of public life, including municipal, judiciary, commercial, and parochial organizations. On the one hand, art schools or related institutions were not within the scope of her study, indicating once more how special the Bauhaus s focus on public relations was in its time. Her conclusion, however, is that these press offices comprised the response of corporate actors to discrimination in or even exclusion from public discourse. 27 This holds true for the Bauhaus as well, given the hostile environment with which the school had to cope. And Bieler s second observation, that particular actors threatened by radical changes tended to intensify their relationships with the press, 28 is confirmed by our study as well (see Chapter 2), including the strong wish to found their own media outlets. Three decades later, looking at public relations efforts between the world economic crisis of 1929 and the early years of the Nazi regime, the degree of professionalism in these press offices had increased substantially, both in terms of public relations instruments and audience targeting. 29 Reviewing these descriptions of early public relations activities in Germany, one may ask whether all these instruments qualify as what we call strategic communication today. 30 Following a definition given recently by Hallahan and others, the concept of strategic communication refers to the purposeful use of communication by an organization to fulfil its mission. 31 Looking at the reports of protagonists, it seems clear that, beyond all coquetry and the myth of a self-made generation in public relations, the rationalism implied in this phrase is seriously challenged. Particularly with regard to the Bauhaus as a nonprofit organization, it can be argued that

24 14 The Bauhaus and Public Relations in looking back, a whole variety of instruments and incidents appear as if they had followed a communication concept or strategy. In fact, there is reason to doubt this assessment, considering that this concept or strategy was never developed or expressed formally in a strategic plan. Rather, the present analysis assumes that Bauhaus public relations evolved from a common spirit among persons with a similar mission and that it was based on intuition rather than on formal education or reasoning. In the end, this incidental application of strategic communication led to a skilful mix of communicative events, which in part may be due to the fact that the artists and designers acting as Bauhaus communicators may have been as creative here as in their other work. Using the example of the Bauhaus, the chapters to follow support the notion that even if members of an organization use communication on purpose to achieve their goals and thus act strategically as individuals, their actions do not always have to follow a codified strategy. It may well be the case that, having a general organizational mission in mind, the practice of the communicators may only incidentally appear to be coordinated while it is actually being improvised and determined by a particular situation. 32 From this point of view it seems inevitable to merge the perspectives of art history, social sciences, and communication research for a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon: Still, the outstanding artistic and design achievements of the Bauhaus and the Bauhäusler form the basis of all communication activities and need to be considered thoroughly because without taking the peculiarities and the logic of the art world into account, all reasonning about public relations in this realm must remain unsatisfactory in lacking a major incitement, which is crucial to this area and highly distinct from other (commercial) branches. On the other hand, referring only to categories from art history, one would, of course, miss the point of this topic namely that the logic of mass media and dynamics of social networks that have substantially shaped the conditions under which artistic expression was possible at all. In order to mutually reflect evidence from both disciplines, the subsequent studies will interrelate aspects of corporate design and behavior, which are, in the case of the Bauhaus, more strongly based on artistic oeuvres and the Bohemian world, and coporate communications, with public relations instruments representing a major outlet (see Figure 1.1). THE CORPORATE IDENTITY OF THE BAUHAUS: THOUGHTS ON CORPORATE DESIGN AND CORPORATE BEHAVIOR The concept of corporate identity (CI) is used especially in corporate studies to describe the inward- and outward-directed coordination of behavior, communication, and image that is fundamental to sustainable organizational development. 33 The point of reference for CI is the so-called

25 Corporate Identity 15 corporate mission (i.e., an institution s long-term objective documented in a particular mission statement ). Although this term did not exist at the time and the institutional background of an art school differs from that of a corporation, one can assume that the Bauhaus was in fact committed to a mission indeed, one that was set down in writing: We have a mission to fulfill. That is the program of the Bauhaus. 34 At that time artistic movements often stated their objectives in a deluge of manifestos, 35 a practice which the Bauhaus adopted as well. In a rather atypical gesture for an art school, Gropius presented his program at the very founding of the Bauhaus in Much cited and distributed throughout Germany in slightly differing versions, 36 it included the key statement The ultimate aim of all visual arts is the building. 37 This pamphlet, whose pathos is quite typical of the time, also explicitly mentions goals of the Bauhaus the reuniting of all applied arts disciplines as a unified work of art in the great building. 38 This was visualized in Lyonel Feininger s fullpage, Expressionist-Cubist39 woodcut titled The Cathedral (Figure 1.2). Dissolving architecture into stars and rays of light, it evokes diverse associations ranging from the spiritual center (ecclesia spiritualis) of religious history to the art-historical significance of the cathedral as the crowning Figure 1.2 Lyonel Feininger: The Cathedral (First Bauhaus Manifesto, April 1919; woodcut). VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2013.

26 16 The Bauhaus and Public Relations achievement of building technology and as a medium for the dominant philosophy of western architecture. 40 Gropius himself understood a building as a Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art that is, as a cathedral of the future, whose wealth of light was to illuminate the smallest things of everyday life. 41 In earlier writings he envisioned the Bauhaus as a contemporary version of the medieval builders associations, with rituals in the manner of Freemasons lodges, secret symbols, cultic garments, and a cult building for ceremonial meetings. 42 Gropius s surviving correspondence indicates that the pamphlet was extensively distributed over a long period of time, delivered on request, to be forwarded for propaganda purposes, 43 or as an unsolicited enclosure included with letters on other matters. Targeted mailings were sent, for instance, to the Kunstgewerbe- und Handelsschule Köln (Cologne Arts and Commercial College) and the Bund Oldenburger Werkkünstler (Association of Oldenburg Applied Artists). 44 The response to the Bauhaus mission was mixed, ranging from the enthusiastic affirmation of Hans Poelzig, who became chairman of the Deutscher Werkbund in 1919 ( a model for the reorganization of other academies and art colleges ), 45 to the cautious approval ( a bit radical ) of Wilhelm von Bode, general director of Berlin museums, 46 and rejection by Max Thedy, who, as deputy director of the predecessor institution, the Großherzoglich Sächsische Hochschule für Bildende Kunst (Ducal Saxon College of Fine Arts), had actually requested Gropius s appointment as director in the first place. 47 Later, Thedy was transferred into the Bauhaus faculty which caused his wholehearted resistance ( from now on I refuse to support your program ). 48 However, the program s true clientele, young potential students, were highly impressed by the Expressionist pathos of the text and the manifesto s 49 visionary, ecstatic cover image. 50 When the institution was consolidated in 1923, there was a programmatic shift toward functionalism 51 that is also documented with something approaching a mission statement. First Oskar Schlemmer wrote an emphatic text for a four-page brochure to accompany the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition, culminating in his statement We exist! We desire! And we create! 52 As early as spring 1922, Schlemmer had demanded a programmatic reorientation ( We have become more sober, we don t want the cathedrals ). 53 His text was an explicit rejoinder to the programmatic statement published by Johannes Itten as the centerpiece of Bruno Adler s Utopia-Almanach, which ultimately did not prevail as the Bauhaus mission. 54 Schlemmer s manifesto never came to public attention, though, since Gropius had that page expunged from each of the 5,000 copies 55 owing to the statement in retrospect kin to Schlemmer s position that following the war the Bauhaus had become a rallying point for those who, believing in the future and storming the heavens, wish to build the cathedral of socialism. It made no difference that Schlemmer distanced himself from the oft-quoted metaphor cathedral of socialism later on

27 Corporate Identity 17 in the text 56 Gropius had always declared publicly and vehemently that he saw the Bauhaus as an apolitical community. 57 Instead, Gropius s essay Idee und Aufbau des Staatlichen Bauhauses (The Idea and Organization of the Staatliches Bauhaus), written for the exhibition catalogue and also distributed as a separate twelve-page publication with a typographic cardboard cover, 58 emerged as the central statement of the modified Bauhaus mission. In this text Gropius cites the formulations of the first manifesto almost verbatim, thus carrying forward the original program, 59 but he expands them to include an orientation toward industrial production, something that had guided Gropius s thinking ever since 1922 and culminated in the programmatic title of his talk at the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition: Kunst und Technik die neue Einheit (Art and Technology The New Unity). 60 The revised mission statement left no doubt that the crafts-oriented ideal of the early Bauhaus phase had been superseded: The Bauhaus affirms the machine as the most modern means of design and seeks to engage with it.... It consciously seeks a connection with industry; for the crafts of the past no longer exist. 61 The Bauhaus program explicitly did not aim to create or propagate a style, something which Gropius would have regarded as a reversion to uncreative, stagnant academism. 62 That this happened nonetheless, as aptly put by Ernst Kállai in his retrospective analysis from 1930 ( Bauhaus style: one word for everything ), 63 was due in part to the characteristic look of the Bauhaus printed materials from 1923 onward, as the most evident expression of an institution s CI is generally its corporate design (CD). This is understood as the visual identity used in designing fonts, work clothing, forms, and documents as well as the architecture of company buildings and especially as manifested in typography and the use of color. 64 An advertising department had been founded at the Bauhaus as part of the preparations for the 1923 Weimar exhibition (see Chapter 4), 65 formally headed by Kandinsky as the form master of the mural workshop, although its nineteen students were organized by Herbert Bayer. 66 This department was later established on a permanent basis as the printing and advertising workshop (see Chapter 5), 67 contributing to a professionalization of presentation that was reflected in such things as the standardization of the Bauhaus look. 68 The most significant symbol of an institution is generally its logo (or signet), a graphically designed figurative and word mark with high recognition value. Although a forward-looking industrial and corporate culture had begun developing distinctive trademarks as early as the late nineteenth century, this was more unusual for other organizations, especially state institutions, where a comparable function was performed by the official stamp that authorized and thus authenticated documents. In the history of the Bauhaus, it is striking that from the very outset the directors placed a high priority on the design of this official stamp. 69 However, they did not simply use the figurative mark of the cathedral that had been introduced in the first manifesto (Figure 1.2); instead, they launched competitions among

28 The Bauhaus and Public Relations 18 Figure 1.3 Bauhaus Weimar signets (Karl Peter Röhl, 1919; Oskar Schlemmer, 1922). Karl Peter Röhl Stiftung, Weimar.

29 Corporate Identity 19 the students 70 and the Bauhaus masters themselves. 71 But the resulting, widely known signets (in the Weimar era Röhl s Sternenmännchen [star man] and Schlemmer s stylized head 72 ; Figure 1.3) were a dramatic departures from the classic, highly official stamp of the time not only visually but also because they were used as trademarks on printed materials and other Bauhaus objects. 73 Although it proved impossible to enforce their use across the board, 74 the complexity of the designs, which fused a figurative and word mark to represent the corporate mission, indicates that these were in fact logos rather than simply official seals. According to Michael Siebenbrodt, the first signet in particular illustrates the visions and utopias of the Weimar Bauhaus.... The signet sends the message of the early Bauhaus: cosmopolitan, communal work on the great building of a more humane future society. 75 Da Vinci s Renaissance man, here depicted as an architect, holds up a pyramid as the crowning architectural achievement of antiquity and as a spiritual symbol associated with the Freemasons. Evoking the Germanic double rune man and woman and the Chinese symbol for the complements Yin and Yang, he is surrounded by several symbols: the swastika as the sun wheel, the Indian symbol of luck, and a star and a planetary form as cosmic allusions, alternately interpreted as alpha and omega, which would characterize the figure as Christ. 76 There is no question that this ornately symbolic logo rendering the core beliefs of Gropius original conception in the manner of the secret symbols used by medieval stonemasons associations constituted a unique and individual trademark. However, it is equally clear that it had limited practical value for graphic use in modern advertising techniques. The programmatic shift in the Bauhaus s mission meant that the esoteric Röhl signet would have to be replaced with a clearer and more strictly stylized logo. In its meeting of October 12, 1921, the Council of Masters had called for proposals for a new Bauhaus stamp to be submitted by November 1 77 ; in a memo circulated among the masters several days previously, the stated justification was that the signet would soon be needed for the art portfolios appearing for Christmas. It was also stipulated that the design would be chosen by the masters alone. 78 No protocol was made of the decision process itself, but by November 28 the Weimar firm Blümner & Auerbach was given an initial commission to cut two stamps according to the enclosed designs. On January 16, 1922, Gropius formally applied for legal recognition of the stamp in its improved form by Oskar Schlemmer as chosen by the Council of Masters. The ministry of culture officially approved its use on January 26, The design goes back to the poster that Schlemmer had created in 1913 for the new art salon at the Neckartor in Stuttgart 80 ; it is composed entirely of geometrical forms, not only reflecting the Constructivist approach but also serving a functional purpose, as all its elements could be formed using existing symbols from a type case. 81 His stylized profile had high recognition value; it became the ultimate trademark of the Bauhaus 82 and continued to

30 20 The Bauhaus and Public Relations be used in Dessau with an altered legend. 83 The significance of this signet becomes clear in a letter Gropius wrote to the Thuringian ministry of education. In the fall of 1923 the ministry had complained that the special stamp, which has become a kind of trademark, did not display the Thuringian coat of arms as required; in response, Gropius successfully argued that it would greatly damage the Bauhaus if this stamp were to lose its validity. 84 But the most significant instrument of corporate design at the Bauhaus was its unique approach to print design, which was gradually introduced in 1923 and based on the principles of Constructivist-oriented commercial art. 85 At the Bauhaus this concept was initially advocated by Oskar Schlemmer, and, crucially, by László Moholy-Nagy, who elucidated the basic features of the New Typography in his article of the same name for the Weimar exhibition catalogue. 86 The consistent use of this typography in all Bauhaus communications (beginning with the statutes from July 1922, printed in 1923 with a design by Oskar Schlemmer 87 ) in the face of sometimes massive criticism from professional circles gave it a homogeneous effect (see Chapter 5), even though (as would be customary today) no uniform CD concept had been agreed upon in advance. Perhaps the most prominent stylistic feature associated with the Bauhaus CD and its interpretation of the new typography was the systematic advocacy of the lower case, actively pursued beginning in 1925 (Fig. Figure 1.4 Bauhaus printed matter in the New Typography, using lowercase letters only (Herbert Bayer: sheet from a furniture prospectus, 1926/1927). VG Bild- Kunst, Bonn 2013.

31 Corporate Identity ). we write everything small, because we save time that way. besides: why 2 alphabets when one achieves the same thing? why write big when you can t speak big, as Herbert Bayer put it in his design for the Bauhaus letterhead. Although at first the striking power of the uppercase was exploited, and Moholy-Nagy s above-mentioned catalogue text from 1923 does not yet contain any mention of the lower case, two years later he emphasized the restriction to one font, composed of minuscules, by citing its economic advantages and improved readability. 88 The basic idea can be traced back to Walter Porstmann s book Sprache und Schrift (Language and Writing, 1920), in which fundamental notions of industrial standardization and norming are applied to writing reform. Porstmann had often been invited to give talks at the Bauhaus, and both Herbert Bayer and Joost Schmidt used his book regularly. 89 Outside the Bauhaus circles the lower case made very little headway, which meant that its use functioned very much as a characteristic of the Bauhaus CD. This can be seen, for instance, in an anonymous review from the trade magazine Typographische Mitteilungen from October 1926, where a commemorative magazine is described as being printed according to Bauhaus and the entire work is characterized as Bauhaus style. 90 Though this categorization would be disputed today, the example shows how lastingly the Bauhaus managed to establish its typographic vision as Bauhaus typography. 91 However, the font that perfectly realized this vision did not come out of Herbert Bayer s or Joost Schmidt s alphabets; it was Paul Renner s highly successful Futura. 92 The success of the Bauhaus typography 93 also carried over into commissions given to advertising designers at the Bauhaus, one example being the design for the emergency banknotes issued by the Weimar state government (see Chapter 6 for greater detail). It was the first commission involving mass machine production, 94 and owing to the rampant inflation, had to be executed with great speed: Herbert Bayer took just two days for the designs, using fonts available in the composing room; the banknotes were printed overnight and issued the very next morning. 95 The banknotes, circulated still damp from the press 96 beginning on August 10, 1923 (i.e., five days before the opening of the Weimar exhibition!), were in fact the earliest publicly distributed manifestation of Bauhaus typography. 97 Their design is a radical departure from the typically ornate appearance of banknotes from that time; they have a stark elegance stemming from the asymmetric arrangement of the blocks of text and the eschewal of the decorations, illustrations, or graphic elements otherwise customary for banknotes. At the same time though so far this aspect has remained largely unappreciated by scholars, who focus mainly on the works themselves the true relevance of this piece of Bauhaus ephemera lay in its effect on the public. Here, radically progressive ideas, jarring and even provocative to contemporary eyes, were being realized in an indispensable article of daily use that was essential to the maintenance of public life. 98 In a time rocked by crises, no citizen

32 22 The Bauhaus and Public Relations of Weimar or its environs could escape the sight of an everyday medium that was obviously inspired by the Bauhaus. It may seem odd to mention work clothes in the context of CD, but it is quite relevant to an examination of the Bauhaus if one considers, for instance, the famous photos of Moholy-Nagy in mechanics overalls, embodying his notion of the artist as technician. 99 The opposite pole in terms of spirituality and fashion was the Madaznan clothing propagated by Itten, recalling the robes of Buddhist monks and also worn by his adherents at the Bauhaus. 100 These robes were not the official Bauhaus uniform, however; that was tailored by the apprentice Kube and comprised a kind of Russian tunic and a kind of funnel-shaped trousers, very wide at the hips and very narrow at the ankles, not unlike a figure in Schlemmer s Triadic Ballet. Like this we strolled those of us who had the courage through Weimar with our apprentices and journeymen. 101 This also served as a protest against bourgeois convention, 102 but rather than being the result of a planned CI measure, it arose from sheer poverty: at that time the uniform could be obtained cheaply from army surplus. 103 There is a further aspect of corporate design that is not directly relevant to the Weimar period of the Bauhaus: The significance that current definitions of CD ascribe to the architecture of company buildings is prototypically illustrated by the Bauhaus buildings. The first was the Versuchshaus am Horn. Realized in the face of many obstacles as a key element of the Weimar exhibition, this model house was erected in four months and furnished and appointed by all the Bauhaus workshops in cooperation with local craftsmen. 104 Designed by Georg Muche with the collaboration of Gropius s architectural firm and financed by Adolf Sommerfeld, a philanthropist and friend of the Bauhaus (see below), 105 the building was the first embodiment of the ideal the collaborative building as a Gesamtkunstwerk which had been formulated in the mission statement; for this reason it later became the subject of an entire Bauhaus book. 106 Admittedly it was controversially received, to put it lightly 107 : Crystallizing the work of the Bauhaus, the Haus am Horn was the focus of many reviews, either mildly critical ( On the whole the building does not yet represent a definitive solution 108 ) or openly polemical and hostile ( the low-slung construction... could be an option only in the Orient 109 ). Later in 1926, the new Bauhaus building in Dessau proved much more effective in this regard; in particular, the view of the Cubist workshop wing, with its glass façade and the outsized Bauhaus sign, had an outstanding iconographic quality (Figure 1.5). 110 Because of its uniqueness and hence recognition value, the building stood for the original idea of the cathedral as a mission rendered in stone and steel: Here the ideal goal of the Bauhaus the collaboration of all the arts on a building was realized with radiant clarity and modernity; the ideas of new building, new dwelling and new living as discussed everywhere were implemented uncompromisingly and persuasively. 111 At the same time the building itself represented a sort

33 Corporate Identity 23 of propaganda via architecture, 112 and it did not fail to make an impact on visitors, colleagues, and prospective students.113 All together, the Bauhausbauten, including the central building as well as the Masters Houses (Meisterhäuser), was a dominant motif; in particular, Lucia Moholy s shots were distributed via announcements, brochures, architectural and popular magazines, and textbooks. During Hannes Meyer s directorship, the Bauhaus buildings often served as a meaningful decoration, unfolding their iconic value in the background, with sportsmen, musicians, or young Bauhaus students in the front.114 The second component contributing to CI, along with corporate design, is corporate behavior (CB). CB manifests itself as a form of organizational culture in employees behavior toward one another, toward customers, and in their (non media) dealings with suppliers, partners, and the public. It is defi ned as the actual, practiced behavior and comportment that is perceived by the organization s partners and which plays a key role in ensuring a persuasive image.115 The recollections of various Bauhäusler repeatedly mention the high degree of social integration that marked the academic experience at the institution.116 Alfred Arndt summed it up in his speech for the 1926 dedication of the new Bauhaus building in Dessau: The task is to build not only buildings, but above all a community! For great things are always carried by the community! 117 The individual instruments can be touched on only briefly here, from the universally praised cafeteria to the Bauhaus Figure 1.5 Bauhaus building, Dessau; view from southwest (tourist postcard, city of Dessau; unknown photographer, ca. 1928).

34 24 The Bauhaus and Public Relations dance ritual, 118 the evening reading sessions at Gropius s home 119 and the Christmas celebrations at which Gropius gave presents to the students. 120 Overall, festivities minor ones each weekend, with bigger costume balls each quarter assumed a special significance for CB and internal integration: My dear friend, do you have any idea how important celebrating was at the Bauhaus, often much more important than the classes themselves, Felix Klee wrote in his memoirs. 121 Bauhäusler without means profited from various support services such as free lunches, clothing donations, scholarships and the establishment of a student self-help network. 122 Despite the many documented internal tensions at the Bauhaus, 123 the development of a sense of community was presumably also encouraged by the permanent hostilities from outside, which targeted not only the Bauhaus management but also the individual students 124 in their Weimar living environment: The Bauhaus community masters, journeymen and apprentices forms a little self-contained island in the sea of Weimar philistinism. 125 On the island itself there were further subgroups, however most obviously the adherents of Itten s and Muche s cult-like Mazdaznan movement. 126 Still, for external stakeholders the Bauhaus CB was probably most apparent at the public events, which were held with great regularity (see Chapter 4), and in the individual public behavior of the Bauhäusler (see Chapter 2). CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS: A SYSTEMATIC OVERVIEW The most significant element of corporate identity in this context is probably corporate communications; that is, as described above, the communication relationships with internal and external audiences in which public relations plays a key role. Nearly all public relations activities at the Weimar Bauhaus were initiated by its director, Gropius (see Chapter 2 for greater detail). He wrote countless letters to politicians, policymakers, journalists, and editorial boards; it was his strong network of avant-garde artists that ensured the sweeping, even global resonance enjoyed by the Bauhaus in cultural circles between the wars. 127 In addition, Gropius s former lover, Lily Hildebrandt, supported him by diligently recruiting members for the Kreis der Freunde (Circle of Friends) and exploring opportunities for publication. 128 The support of his wife Ise (née Ilse Frank) should not be underestimated either. Before their marriage in October 1923 (i.e., the time of the Weimar exhibition), she had worked for a daily newspaper, among other things. Ise Gropius proved equally successful as a fundraiser and a propagandist for the Bauhaus, quickly assuming a position of responsibility for the Bauhaus s public relations. 129 She launched advertising campaigns in the Rhineland, where she networked with such people as Konrad Adenauer, then the mayor of Cologne, recruited new members for the Kreis

35 Corporate Identity 25 der Freunde, and visited regional journalists, publishers, and opinion leaders at Gropius s behest. Once Gropius wrote to her that one must win over the press, as you have rightly understood. You clearly have a great talent for diplomatic campaigns. 130 For a long while the responsibility for public relations thus fell to Gropius as the director of the institution, and it was sustained by his initiatives and contacts. 131 For this reason it did not follow an explicitly formulated public relations strategy or an analytically based communication concept. Rather, Gropius profited from his years of experience as a member of the Werkbund, the highly influential German Association of Craftsmen, whose activities were characterized by extensive (and successful) public relations efforts. 132 László Moholy-Nagy s appointment brought Gropius a righthand man, as shown by his numerous letters regarding media relations for the 1923 exhibition (see Chapter 3) 133 and correspondence about the Bauhaus book series (see Chapter 7). The activities developed primarily by Gropius at the Weimar and Dessau Bauhaus can be classified using a more recent method for systematizing public relations fields of action, addressing basic functions, stakeholders, themes, and forms of communication (along with the associated instruments). 134 Other writers have already provided a detailed list of individual measures 135 and an analysis from a typographic and design perspective, 136 to which readers are referred for a more comprehensive discussion. By contrast, the following overview serves to elucidate the communication strategy of the Bauhaus and to locate it within an overall concept of relations with the public. Basic Functions of Public Relations at the Bauhaus With respect to the basic functions of public relations, it was mentioned above that there is a very limited extent to which the Bauhaus can be assumed to have had an actual strategic conception of relations with the public. The opportunity for discussion and analysis (beyond Gropius s personal assessments) arose only during the meetings of the Council of Masters 137 ; there were no other known institutionalized or informal entities at the Bauhaus (apart from concrete preparations for exhibitions or the design tasks of the advertising workshop) that engaged in developing communication strategies. 138 But it should be pointed out that, notably enough, a controlling instrument was available from the very day the Bauhaus was founded: Dr. Max Goldschmidt s well-known Berlin press clipping service was commissioned to observe mentions of the word Bauhaus and the names of the Bauhaus masters in the German and international press (see Chapter 8). 139 Despite the chronically strained financial situation of the Bauhaus, there was never any question of canceling the subscription, although, billed by clipping, it was quite expensive. 140 Over the years the service delivered several thousand newspaper articles, from brief event announcements to extensive features on the spirit of the institution. These

36 26 The Bauhaus and Public Relations clippings were compiled, together with documents from other sources, and pasted chronologically in scrapbooks. 141 Little is known about the concrete implementation of public relations measures at the Bauhaus. As far as can be judged from the surviving documents, the editorial tasks were performed mainly by Gropius himself, occasionally assisted by László Moholy-Nagy (in the case of the Bauhaus books, see Chapter 7) and Oskar Schlemmer (in the case of the manifesto for the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition, see above). 142 The design was generally done inhouse, either on the basis of competitions (as with the logos, see above) or, more frequently, commissioned from the printing workshop and its members (see Chapter 5). Individual advertisements for the 1923 Weimar exhibition were typeset by the newspapers themselves (Figure 4.1); at any rate, they lack all hints of Bauhaus typography and thus of the institution s corporate design. By no means all the public relations texts were designed in-house; generally they were hectographed press releases from Gropius s office that were sent to the newspaper editors. 143 The organization of largescale activities, such as the 1923 exhibition or the festivities, was carried out as a collective effort by the entire institution. Here all the members of the Bauhaus, masters and students alike, were called upon to make their own contributions. Smaller-scale measures such as mailings were presumably executed by the director s office; at any rate, there is no evidence of any separate organizational unit for press or publicity work. External commissions went to the Berliner press clippings service; apart from that, the chronic shortness of funds at the Bauhaus must have hindered the hiring of expertise from outside. Stakeholders Addressed by Bauhaus Public Relations Some of the main stakeholders addressed by Bauhaus public relations have already been mentioned. The addressees for internal relations were primarily current and former students. The corporate behavior described above encouraged them, aided by the framework set by the school s administration and the communication and integration measures directed at the students, to develop identities as Bauhäusler. However, it is impossible to speak of a monolithic, self-contained Bauhaus community that pursued the institution s goals without dissent, although it may sometimes appear that way in retrospect. Daily routine was characterized by a fundamental commitment on the part of all involved, but the list of internal conflicts is long. 144 The minutes of the Council of Masters make it possible to reconstruct a number of minor conflicts with and among students 145 as well as various internal acid tests. These began with initial opposition from the old school faculty, followed by the proclamations of the student Hans Groß leading to the expulsion of a whole group of Bauhäusler. The conflicts ranged from the conspiracies of Carl Schlemmer s circle to the clash of visions between the functionalist Gropius and the Mazdaznan disciple Itten, 146 in which

37 Corporate Identity 27 Lothar Schreyer was also involved. 147 Typical of the specific situation at the Bauhaus, all these conflicts, rather than being negotiated and solved internally, were consistently waged in the public eye and the many local opponents of the Bauhaus (see Chapter 2) instrumentalized these disputes, with the Weimar press serving as a willing ally. In this way internal relations regularly influenced external public relations, whereby media relations with journalists and mass media are naturally of particular relevance. For Gropius the communicator, contacts with the press media relations were thus of outstanding importance. Only with the help of the press could he disseminate his messages and news (see Chapter 2 for greater detail) and reach the public. Journalists, as potential disseminators, constitute a central target group for public relations. 148 In the case of the Bauhaus, however, inexpert contact with representatives of the press posed some problems; initially Gropius found it difficult to distinguish between friends and foes, as shown by the example of the leading Weimar newspaper. The relationship between the director and the press was ambivalent, calling for a differentiated view. And despite Gropius s efforts, relations with the local press were rather tense. 149 Another important type of stakeholder, mentioned by Ulrike Röttger, pertains to community relations, with the community understood as the local population and milieu in the company s vicinity. 150 For the Bauhaus in Weimar, the gap between the local (immediate) audience on the one hand and the national and international art audience posed a special challenge. The Bauhaus and its protagonists were dependent on local factors, especially on financing from the State of Thuringia, and thus operated under the constant pressure to legitimize themselves by demonstrating that they were putting the taxpayers money to good use. 151 In the city of Weimar, municipal authorities and the burgeois group of Kulturbürger (highbrow culture citizens) were more than skeptical of the new objectives, which blatantly broke with the tradition of the former School of Fine Arts. 152 On the other hand, with an internationally renowned faculty, the artistic sphere of influence was aimed at a global audience, and the Bauhaus as a whole represented an international endeavor in many respects. 153 In this connection an important role was played by the Circle of Friends of the Bauhaus, founded in early and intended to offer the Bauhaus creative and material help (see Chapter 2). Although this support association was unable to prevent the expulsion of the Bauhaus from Weimar, it developed effective activities as a cultural and political lobby in Dessau 155 (Figure 1.6), as shown by the elaborate letter of thanks, designed by László Moholy-Nagy, that mayor Fritz Hesse received four months after the Bauhaus moved to Dessau. 156 A final example is the conflict with a group of stakeholders at the intersection between the two spheres, namely Thuringian artists. During the planning of the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition, a disagreement developed with the Wirtschaftsverband Weimarer bildender Künstler (Trade Association of Weimar Fine Artists) regarding the use of the Landesmuseum; the

38 28 The Bauhaus and Public Relations Figure 1.6 Community relations, supported by the Circle of Friends: invitation to a Gropius lecture and presentation of Bauhaus products (Herbert Bayer, postcard, October 1925). VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn Wirtschaftsverband had been forced to hold its 2. Thüringer Kunstausstellung (2nd Thuringian Art Exhibition) in Eisenach instead and complained in the press that the Bauhaus was receiving preferential treatment. 157 After compromises suggested by Gropius failed to settle the controversy, the Council of Masters decided, on May 26, to produce a public rejoinder and break off its relations with the Wirtschaftsverband an indication of the low level of support for the Bauhaus among local artists. 158 Gropius set his sights on the field of financial and investor relations early on when he began to consider marketing Bauhaus products in cooperation with manufacturers, an idea that went hand in hand with a fundamental shift in the institution s self-concept. 159 The establishment of a limited company under the institution s label (Bauhaus GmbH) was supposed to provide tangible financial relief for the State of Thuringia and at the same time allow for a certain financial independence from state subsidies (see Chapter 2). Bauhaus Public Relations Themes The Weimar Bauhaus in particular, subjected to perpetual attacks in the Thuringian press ever since its foundation, found itself in a permanently declared crisis of communication. 160 While classic cases of crisis public

39 Corporate Identity 29 relations involve a trigger event (such as the planned sinking of the oil platform Brent Spar) that makes the organization (such as the Shell Oil Company) come under critical fire, 161 the communication crisis of the Bauhaus was more a permanent state of emergency: there was no fundamental conflict resolution, no chance to recover after the crisis, and little opportunity to learn from it in a systematic way. 162 Critics from the political and regional elites agitated constantly from the founding of the Bauhaus to its departure from Weimar and later on again in Dessau. 163 The low point of their campaign was a polemical, slanderous article by the Berlin government and building councilor Dr. Konrad Nonn in the Deutsche Zeitung. Under the headline Staatliche Müllzufuhr. Das staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar ( State Trash Dump: The Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar ), 164 he described the work of the Bauhaus as pathological and as evidence of the most profoundly out-of-touch degradedness... cobbled together from the contents of a scrap heap. This and other attacks by the Berlin architect prompted Gropius to file a private lawsuit, resulting in a settlement in which Nonn took back his political slander. 165 Crucial in this context is Cornelia Schimpf s analysis that the Weimar Bauhaus controversy was waged chiefly in the media in this case the Weimar, Thuringian, and national press 166 : The press [played] a significant role in the work of the Bauhaus. The Bauhäusler themselves used the newspapers to defend themselves or convey their ideas to the public. But above all, the opposing side also found opportunities in its own press organs to attack the Bauhaus and sway the citizens of Weimar in the battle against the Bauhaus. Even in the relevant debates in the Thuringian parliament, Gropius as well as various members of parliament cited newspaper articles in their arguments. 167 Thus many communication activities undertaken by Gropius and the Bauhaus can be seen as a kind of public affairs management aimed at influencing the political environment, something that today would be understood as lobbying. Important political partners for the institution were Reichskunstwart (Reich Art Commissioner) Edwin Redslob, Staatsminister für Volksbildung (State Education Minister) Max Greil of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), government councilor Albert Rudolph, who was responsible for the Bauhaus at the ministry, and members of parliament from the SPD, Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), and the Deutsche Demokratische Partei (DDP), or German Democratic Party. 168 The realization of the major Bauhaus exhibition of 1923 (see Chapter 4) can also be understood as a public affairs measure aimed at presenting local politicians with the accomplishments of the Bauhaus and thus legitimizing the state funds it received. 169 From a contemporary point of view, however, it seems doubtful whether one can speak generally of strategic issues management on the part of the

40 30 The Bauhaus and Public Relations Bauhaus. Of course, alongside the exhibition of 1923, which can be seen as a highly successful effort to put the Bauhaus on the public agenda, it is possible to identify a range of other issues that Gropius and his colleagues introduced into the public discourse for instance, the concept of the unity of arts and crafts, the principle of functionality in design, and the already mentioned New Typography, including the use of the lower case. These issues did in fact spark media controversy and offered the Bauhaus protagonists good opportunities to espouse their positions in public, thus communicating the institution s goals and intentions. These thematization processes did not follow an overriding public relations strategy, however; for the most part they arose from the individual interests of artists at the Bauhaus who framed their personal views programmatically. On the other hand, the Bauhaus leaders managed only in exceptional cases to find adequate communicative measures to counter local hostilities for instance regarding the unfounded accusations that members of the Bauhaus had engaged in lewd behavior with a female nude model. 170 In the run-up to the Weimar exhibition, Gropius asked selected journalists to be so obliging as to write a few words about the Bauhaus exhibition before other people publish bad articles. 171 It proved impossible to control the fundamental debates about the right of the Bauhaus to exist and about its supposed politicization; one example is the declaration that Gropius disseminated in the Weimar daily newspapers in April 1924 in reaction to a question posed in the Thuringian parliament by the German nationalist bloc. 172 Tellingly, the question was not directed at the state government itself, so that it could respond with a statement; instead, the parties involved made their statements in the media outside the parliamentary arena. The ends to which Gropius went to respond to these narrow-minded accusations clearly show how poorly the Bauhaus was able to control the issues in the public debate. Forms and Instruments of Communication in Bauhaus Public Relations Numerous studies have already explored the various communication measures taken by the Bauhaus, as these generally also had an artistic, creative component and are thus equally significant from the perspective of cultural history. From the perspective of public relations research, events and event series directed at an immediate audience (Chapters 3 and 4) can be distinguished from publications and media products aimed at a dispersed audience (Chapters 6 and 7). Both are combined in specific campaigns that address stakeholders with one goal, but in different ways. In addition, media coverage can enable events to achieve an effect that extends beyond the circle of actual participants (Chapters 8 through 10). 173 Sections I to III of this volume elaborate on several of these instruments at length. That

41 Corporate Identity 31 is why we limit our remarks here to the enumeration of major resources developed by the Bauhaus. In keeping with the nature of the Bauhaus as an art college, its most significant individual events were its exhibitions and participation in joint exhibitions, either initiated by the institution itself or contributed to by masters and students. The first major exhibition in 1923 was flanked by a number of supplementary measures, 174 first and foremost among which was the Bauhauswoche (Bauhaus week) from August 15 to 19, 1923, with a wealth of lectures, musical and theater performances. Another was the catalogue, with its retrospective character and large print run (the Bauhaus was still selling the remainders years later 175 ). The Bauhaus postcards proved to be an effective instrument of distribution, as were numerous other printed materials. 176 Finally, there was the Bauhaus s link with the annual conference of the Deutscher Werkbund, whose attendees made a group visit to the exhibition in Weimar and on October 6 passed a resolution to continue the work of the Bauhaus. 177 In addition, various events with an outside impact were regularly organized in and by the Bauhaus, among them encounters with intellectuals and artists from all over the world during the Bauhausabende (Bauhaus evenings), local festivities open to the public and on calendrical basis, an orchestra, and a theater class (Chapter 4). These events have two things in common: they were highly effective at conveying aspects of Bauhaus thought and thus helped form the institution s corporate image, and they also created occasions for further media coverage, which helped their messages reach a public beyond each immediate audience. The Bauhaus evenings, for which invitations were regularly sent to local decision makers, 178 offered an especially good opportunity for more comprehensive advance and follow-up reporting about the Bauhaus. Moreover, the mere presence of prominent and well-known cultural figures improved the image of the event organizer. Early on, the Bauhaus began producing its own publications and media products in order to adequately present its work (see Chapter 5). 179 Particularly the books and magazines are subject of Chapter 7; however, a brief overview should also highlight the several graphic arts portfolios and various mass-distributed information brochures, beginning with the Bauhaus manifesto (Cathedral, see Figure 1.2) from 1919 and ranging to material with course information and advertising materials for prospective students. 180 These media products, which are described and analyzed in detail elsewhere, 181 were conceptualized and answered for by the Bauhaus itself, enabling perfect control over their contents. In particular the series of Bauhaus books, further developed during the Dessau period, garnered a great deal of national and international attention and originally Gropius saw their publication as a political necessity, a way of justifying the institution s work. 182

42 32 The Bauhaus and Public Relations However, a successful public relations strategy cannot be based on selfproduced media alone, as this always raises the question of distributing and marketing these materials effectively. Smart concepts make the best possible use of established media in order to reach their specific audiences. In its meeting of March 24, 1922, the Council of Masters decided to start having good reproductions of Bauhaus products published in magazines. 183 With this idea the Bauhaus followed the example of the German Werkbund, where as early as 1909 a Photographien- und Diapositivzentrale (Center for Photo Prints and Diapositives) was founded in order to document pictures of products and buildings for publication in exhibitions, books, and catalogues. 184 The role of photographer was performed mainly by Lucia Moholy, making her into a documenter of the Bauhaus idea ; the photographs, which Gropius integrated into his public relations measures, were effective in publicly promoting the notion that Bauhaus products were prototypes for modern up-to-date design. 185 Pursuing this goal, Gropius managed repeatedly to position extensive special sections in magazines and even to conceptualize entire special issues on themes relevant to the Bauhaus and the Bauhaus idea (see Chapter 10 for greater detail). Surely the most remarkable success in this respect was the 1926 Bauhaus issue of Offset, 186 a trade magazine for the graphic arts field, to which several Bauhaus masters contributed articles, artwork, and designs (Figure 1.7). If the Weimar Bauhaus needed something like a statement of accounts, here it was, 187 unfortunately too late to be effective at its first location. A first high point, though, had previously been the special Bauhaus issue of the magazine Junge Menschen (Young People) in 1924, in which journeymen and young masters presented the ideas and work of the Bauhaus without the otherwise obligatory contribution by Gropius. 188 The design ( Typographic arrangement: Joost Schmidt Bauhaus ) 189 echoed the corporate design of the Bauhaus. To avoid alienating the magazine s readership it was delivered with two different covers, one leaning more strongly toward the magazine s usual appearance. 190 In terms of communicating the Bauhaus idea to broader levels of the population, however, the elevenpage special section of the highly popular monthly Velhagen und Klasings Monatshefte must have been much more significant. 191 Set in classic Gothic type but opulently designed with eight pages of color illustrations (!), the publication addressed the educated middle class of the Weimar Republic, and the positive commentary by a neutral author lent the account a special degree of credibility. The Bauhaus did not conduct public relations campaigns in the strict sense of the word, but such activities as the preparations for and marketing of the 1923 Weimar exhibition (see Chapter 3) can be interpreted in this sense as an integrated communication concept. 192 Another part of this campaign was the subsequent publication of the press commentaries (see Chapter 9), and especially the supplementary Kundgebungen für das staatliche Bauhaus Weimar (Testimonials for the Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar) from

43 33 Corporate Identity Fig. 1.7 Special issue: The Bauhaus. Offset-, Buch- und Werbekunst 3 (1926), 7 (Cover design by Joost Schmidt, Oct. 1925). VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn October With its continued existence under threat, the Bauhaus presented these thirty-two letters of support from Germany and abroad to the public (according to the subheading), although the true addressees were the government and the Thuringian parliament. These testimonials by prominent disseminators and institutions (such as the German and Austrian